Amazon.com description: Product Description: Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid 19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays & correspondence and more than 1,500 public lectures and speeches across the United States. Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays & correspondence and speeches encompasses a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability of humankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures and speeches first, then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays, Essays: First and Second Series are contained in this volume and they were originally published in 1841 and 1844 respectively. Essays: First and Second Series represent the core of Ralph Waldo Emerson's thinking, and include his well known essays Self-Reliance, History, Spiritual Laws, and Love, just to name a few. Whether derived from an Emerson speech, lecture, essay, or correspondence, this edition of Ralph Waldo Emerson's work is an invaluable literature compilation.